Leonid Plyushch, an active member of the Soviet human rights movement and victim of punitive psychiatry has died in France. He was 76, and had lived in France since being exiled from the Soviet Union in 1976 following a major campaign for his release from incarceration in a KGB psychiatric ‘hospital’. Although concentrating mainly on literary issues in recent years, Leonid Ivanovych followed events in Ukraine and always responded when voices were needed against injustice.

“There was one choice: either I accept what I regard as evil, or I refuse to accept it. No other”. Władysław Bartoszewski, Polish historian and public figure, one of the Righteous of the Nations bore testimony to the truth in his works and in his life and his passing is a great loss not only for Poland>

It is 40 days since Boris Nemtsov, fierce opponent of Moscow’s war against Ukraine and against its own people, was gunned down near the Kremlin. Please join in a Moment of NON-Silence in Boris Nemtsov’s memory and in defiance of those who want him forgotten.

Putin’s telegram had another message for the wider Russian audience, one with a bad Soviet smell to it. It was addressed to Dina Yakovlevna Eidman, although Nemtsov’s mother has not used her maiden name since she married 63 years ago, and the Kremlin had every reason to know this

Boris Nemtsov was murdered 2 weeks after he told a Russian newspaper that, like his mother, he was afraid that Vladimir Putin would have him killed. His was one of the few public voices of sanity in Russia, unafraid to speak out and even make a film about the war Putin has launched against Ukraine.

While thousands gathered on Maidan in Kyiv in memory of over 100 EuroMaidan protesters gunned down by police snipers a year ago, eight Muscovites were detained by police while trying to lay flowers outside the Ukrainian embassy

On the first anniversary of the bloodiest day of the EuroMaidan protests, civic activists, lawyers and others will be gathering on Maidan with a clear message to Ukraine’s President Poroshenko and parliamentarians. If you want us to believe that the authorities will never gun down peaceful protesters again, then ratify the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court!

The death has been announced of Mykola Plakhotnyuk, former political prisoner, victim of punitive psychiatry and member of the important 1960s ‘Club for Creative Young People’. In later years Mykola Plakhotnyuk played a major role in creating a museum about the 1960s movement in Ukraine

On this 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, it will be survivors who are heard, not politicians. Around 300 former prisoners are expected to attend, and the ceremony this year centres around them. No ‘snubs’, no political scandals, simply recognition of a day when politicians should fall silent.

One year ago today two Maidan activists - Serhiy Nihoyan and Mikhail Zhyznevsky - were shot and killed on Hrushevsky St in Kyiv. On that same January 22 - Ukrainian Unity Day - Roman Senyk received fatal injuries, dying several days later, and Yury Verbytsky was left to die in a forest after being subjected to horrific torture. Nobody has been held to answer for any of these deaths.

Well-known human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov and 25-year-old Anastasia Baburova who was finishing journalism studies and working for Novaya Gazeta were gunned down in Moscow on January 19, 2009.

Gleb Yakunin, priest, defender of freedom of conscience and other human rights, former Soviet dissident and political prisoner, has died in Moscow. He was 80

Stefaniya Shabatura, artist, former member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group and political prisoner has died after a long illness. She was 76

We mourn together with family and friends the passing of Yevhen Sverstvyuk, Ukrainian writer, thinker and civic figure, a man who spent years in the Soviet labour camps for his commitment to truth and to Ukraine and who became a moral beacon for very many in Ukraine and beyond.

"The Heavenly Hundred through their deaths prevented the death of many other people. And Ukraine took a step forward. Thanks to such acts society consolidate and a nation emerges. Please note how we have united, regardless of origin or faith. We all say that we are Ukrainians"

Millions of Ukrainians will be honouring the more than 110 EuroMaidan activists who lost their lives in the protests that began a year ago this week

While 5 men were finally, in 2014, sentenced to long prison terms over the murder of the Novaya Gazeta journalist, nobody seriously believes that the prosecutor got even close to those who ordered the murder of one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most articulate critics. Nor that any real attempts were made to do so

73 years ago, on 29 and 30 September 1941, the Nazis murdered over 33 thousand Jewish men, women and children at Babyn Yar [or Babi Yar, from the Russian], then a ravine on the outskirts of Kyiv

Valeria Novodvorskaya, one of the most courageous and truly free people in Russia died in Moscow on Saturday, aged only 64. She was a political prisoner and victim of punitive psychiatry in Soviet times, a defender of democracy, of sanity as Russia has slipped back into authoritarian rule under Vladimir Putin.